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User: Chris+Mattern

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  1. And cancerous explosives! on Stanford Creates Tricorder-Like Devices For Detecting Cancer and Explosives (stanford.edu) · · Score: 1

    ...also explosive cancers!

  2. Re:Stupid article on British Spaceplane Skylon Could Revolutionize Space Travel (ieee.org) · · Score: 1

    Tankage mass is not generally that expensive

    The engines you'll have to build to lift that mass are another matter.

  3. Re:Stupid article on British Spaceplane Skylon Could Revolutionize Space Travel (ieee.org) · · Score: 2

    Skylon saves propellant? Propellant is cheap.

    On the contrary, propellant is damn expensive. Its mass winds up being most of the mass of the rocket, which you then have to lift.

  4. Re:Fundamental right????? on Fast Broadband To Be Classed a Fundamental Right in the UK (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    In modern society the internet is replacing the post office.

    But access to a post office is not a right. It's something governments have striven to provide their citizens, but it's never been a right.

  5. Re:How's that appeasement workin' out fer ya? on Pro-Privacy Webmail ProtonMail Pays Ransom, But Hit By DDoS Attack Anyway (wordpress.com) · · Score: 1

    You need a better dictionary. "Geld" can also be a noun with a very different meaning, although that usage is a bit archaic.

  6. Re:reading on Scan a Book In Five Minutes With a $199 Scanner? (teleread.com) · · Score: 1

    Dead tree books can be damaged too and much more easily.

    Okay, let's do this. I'll drop my book from a height of ten feet. You do the same with your book reader.

    Also, when you damage a book, you've damaged one book. When you break your reader, you've lost *all* your books.

  7. Re:reading on Scan a Book In Five Minutes With a $199 Scanner? (teleread.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Hint: That's why thousands of bookstores are closed, because people prefer eBooks over paper ones.

    No, thousands of bookstores are closed because people can select from a much wider selection from Amazon. Paper book sales increased 2.4% last year.

  8. Re:Ob on Scan a Book In Five Minutes With a $199 Scanner? (teleread.com) · · Score: 1

    Odd. The link takes me right to a Staples page for an 8-page crosscut shredder.

  9. Re:How's that appeasement workin' out fer ya? on Pro-Privacy Webmail ProtonMail Pays Ransom, But Hit By DDoS Attack Anyway (wordpress.com) · · Score: 1

    More appropriately:

    And that is called paying the DDOS geld
    But we've proved it again and again
    That if once you have paid them the DDOS geld
    You never get rid of the DDOS!

  10. Re:How's that appeasement workin' out fer ya? on Pro-Privacy Webmail ProtonMail Pays Ransom, But Hit By DDoS Attack Anyway (wordpress.com) · · Score: 1

    Nope, although it's often misquoted that way: http://www.bartleby.com/73/804....

  11. Re:A funny story about a slide rule (IBM manager) on When Slide Rules Were Like Cellphones (hackaday.com) · · Score: 1

    It may have been Ivorite--a plastic K&E made of a lot of their slide rules out of. Just about all K&E slide rules that weren't wood were Ivorite.

  12. Re:hence the old joke... on When Slide Rules Were Like Cellphones (hackaday.com) · · Score: 1

    Yep, that's how it works. Getting more than three significant digits isn't possible with a slide rule. If you needed more precision than that, you got out the logarithm tables.

  13. Re:Argument's silver anniversary on Andrew Tanenbaum Announces MINIXcon (minix3.org) · · Score: 1

    After all, just look at all the air time she gets compared to people like John Cage, who in the court of musical popularity are obviously doing it wrong.

    I dunno. Just because he can do a split and punch you in the balls, does that really make him such a great musician?

  14. Re:Argument's silver anniversary on Andrew Tanenbaum Announces MINIXcon (minix3.org) · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You can just see how Tannenbaum won the argument by looking at how Minix installations outnumber Linux ones.

    Tannenbaum may think he won. You may think Tannenbaum won. The world, apparently, thinks differently.

  15. Re:Terrorists and paedophiles on Internet Firms To Be Banned From Offering Unbreakable Encryption Under New UK Laws (telegraph.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    Why do no politician even think that a backdoor may be used by a terrorist or a paedophile?

    Because computers are magic and all we have to do is make the magic keep the bad guys out.

  16. On what basis? Court decisions are part of the public record; none of the participants have any right or expectation of privacy. Any information with a legal reason not to be made public will be redacted before the decision is publicized and it would be the redacted version that the Harvard Project would put online.

  17. Re:It actually doesn't accept full commands on Twitch Viewers Will Try To Collaboratively Install Arch Linux (twitchinstalls.com) · · Score: 1

    So how it actually works is that everyone types 1 letter (or I suppose it takes the first letter you've typed) and it uses that. So to type 'sudo rm -rf /' it would require people to type those exact letters in that sequence. Considering there will probably be many people there at once, some of whom don't want that typed, it will be significantly harder to troll.

    By the same token, any command will require people to type the right letters in the right sequence. I will be surprised if the project in its current form manages to issue a single successful command.

  18. Solar energy in space is very easy to harvest on Solar Energy in Space is not Necessarily Easy to Harvest (Video) · · Score: 1

    Getting the energy down to earth may be another matter--which is a case for building what needs to use the energy right there in space next to the collector.

  19. Re:your IoT is holding you in a concentration camp on F-Troop and the 'Internet of Thingies' (Video) · · Score: 1

    (( who can get a Fred Kovacs reference in here? ))

    The soccer player? Or do you mean Ernie Kovacs?

  20. Re:The Internet of Things on F-Troop and the 'Internet of Thingies' (Video) · · Score: 1

    I'm warning you, Dobbs...

  21. Re:No, dumbass on When Does School Life Begin? Zuckerberg's New School To Admit Fetuses · · Score: 1

    Especially the German ones. Seems a day doesn't go by without someone complaining about the Saxon violins...

  22. The Answer is Hazy on Is Buying Cuban Software Legal In the US? The Answer is Hazy (blogspot.com) · · Score: 1
  23. Re:Let me be the first to put this here on Drug Firm Offers $1 Version of $750 Daraprim Pill (chicagotribune.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So he's making cheap generics while shorting biotech stocks. Excuse me while I weep copious tears for the company that hiked its medicine price 100 times and expected to make a profit on it.

  24. Re:How black? on Engineers Create the Blackest Material Yet (phys.org) · · Score: 1
  25. Judge should really check things... on Judge Tosses Wikimedia's Anti-NSA Lawsuit Because Wikipedia Isn't Big Enough (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    ...before making analogies. A trillion grains of sand is about 150 regular dump trucks' worth.